{"id":332785,"date":"2025-12-05T22:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T22:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/332785\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T22:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T22:02:07","slug":"cardinals-claim-zak-kent-off-waivers-from-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/332785\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals Claim Zak Kent Off Waivers From Guardians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Cardinals announced Friday that they\u2019ve claimed right-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kentza01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Zak Kent<\/a> off waivers from the Guardians. The Cards already had a pair of 40-man vacancies and are now up to 39 players on the roster.<\/p>\n<p>Kent, 28 in February, made his big league debut in Cleveland this past season. He tossed 17 2\/3 innings out of the Guards\u2019 bullpen and yielded nine earned runs (4.58 ERA) with a 21.1% strikeout rate and 10.5% walk rate. Kent averaged 92.6 mph on his four-seamer and 93.6 mph on a sparsely used sinker. His breaking offerings include a mid-80s slider and a low-80s curveball.<\/p>\n<p>Though Kent didn\u2019t show much in his relatively limited run at the MLB level, he turned in a sharp 2.84 ERA in 38 Triple-A frames last year. Command issues still plagued him, evidenced by 13.2% walk rate, but he also set down more than 31% of his opponents on strikes. He\u2019s long been credited as having a pair of plus breaking pitches, but his sub-par fastball velocity and poor command have undercut the quality of both those breaking pitches.<\/p>\n<p>Kent is out of minor league options, so the Cardinals can\u2019t send him to Triple-A Memphis next season without first passing him through waivers. There\u2019s no guarantee he makes it to spring training on the 40-man roster, but if he does stick on the roster all winter, Kent should have an opportunity to win a job in what should be a wide-open competition for at least four bullpen spots (five, if the Cardinals trade <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/romerjo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-12-05_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">JoJo Romero<\/a>, as expected).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cardinals announced Friday that they\u2019ve claimed right-hander Zak Kent off waivers from the Guardians. The Cards already&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99,168342],"class_list":{"0":"post-332785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-zak-kent"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}